SWSE Character Creation

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This article is not meant to give the player a specific route to finding her characters "fluff-and-stuff", but instead is a view that is only expressed as an experience had with the Saga rules.

Contents

Introduction

As a player, character creation is half the fun! Or, half the headache depending on you outlook. One good rule of thumb when rolling a new sheet is to know exactly what the GM expects the gaming style to be, era and all the associated restrictions, knowing how your gaming style interacts with the game style of the GM, and most importantly WHO you want your character to be in the game world.

Traditional Character Creation

If you are taking your character creation process straight out of the core rules guide, then here's how it would look:

Generate Stat Scores

Select Species

Choose Class

Assign Scores

Combat Stats

Skills

Feats

Talents

Credits/Gear

Polish (fluff)

And this would be perfectly fine if your style of play is as methodical as the process, but lets assume that you wanted to spice things up a bit. No matter how you look at it, these are the essential steps in creating a character, but what if we took a different route in completing this process? (3+3) is the same as (10-7+3) so why not just shuffle the sequence around.

Lets take one way of doing this that seems to be a common event here on Myth-Weavers: Concept and Roleplay > Mechanics and Gameplay.

Conceptual Character Creation

So lets look at it from a linear standpoint and put it into an eqation: Generate Stat Scores + Select Species + Choose Class + Assign Scores + Combat Stats + Skills + Feats + Talents + Credits/Gear + Fluff = Character. Again, this equation is true. What if we come by some of these steps by combining 2 or more steps.

Lets take numbers 2 and 10 from the above list and see what we can get: Species+Polish= ??? You could have your "Polish/Fluff" determine your characters species or the other way around, so lets take the latter. Humans: resilient, quick learners, found almost everywhere in the galaxy, from slave to royalty, this species cover the gambit of every conceivable archetype in the Star Wars universe. No inherent bonuses to their stats but with their quick learning ability, they gain a bonus feat and skill. Lets say this human grew up on Naboo and into a family of farmers. This human could be your typical humans from Naboo who are pacifists but has learned basic defense techniques and hunting skills. This human could be a lover of survivalism and hunting. Or, this human could be born into high society, and come from one of the bureaucratic families that rule the planet. If either of these character backgrounds are true for you, then you could make a backstory that tells the story of his/her time on the plains hunting big game for food and sport, or learning the intricacies of politics from their mother/father.

So we would get [Human(bonus feat+bonusskill) + Fluff(Planet*socio-economic status)] = Character Class. From this point you could assign stats, and in turn go with selecting skills, talents and feats. Again, thinking out of the ordinary to find your motivation for character background, class, etc is the focus on conceptual character creation. So if you want a character who isn't very smart, but wants to learn the ways of the force then by all means do it.